Gain Your Life Back – Free Your Self

Here We Sit. Welcome.

I was having a conversation with some friends yesterday, when we realized that in the midst of our wonderful and beautiful differences and commonalities, we are ultimately bonded by one thing.

We’ve all been abused by the same person.

He played different roles in our lives, but certain of his treatments and behaviors have affected us deeply.

If you have found this blog, I want you to know the two reasons why I am speaking to you today.

I need to help you.

I, myself, need to heal.

I got to thinking: If someone had told me the man I would date, become engaged to, and marry, would become my abuser/manipulator even before I said “I Do,” I believe I would have listened. Given the right setting, without a million distractions, had a person I trust reached out to me, I believe I would have listened.

My family insists they raised concerns to me, and that I chose not to listen. I recall two times this occurred. About a month before my May 2002 wedding, my mom visited to make my wedding dress. She saw and heard several behaviors from my fiance which concerned her deeply. She told me the way he was treating me and the way he was acting was not good, and not right. I was nervous and embarrassed, and I felt like I couldn’t look at her. At that time, I had already begun to feel that I didn’t love him very much. But I felt trapped in the relationship. I will be explaining why in my posts and videos in this blog. The other time was when my dad called me a couple weeks before the wedding to raise concerns. He said my mom and he were praying for me. He said I needed to realize that my goals and dreams did not match those of my fiance. Some major differences:

I was 25 years old; he was 23. I wanted to start a family pretty quickly, during college. He wanted us to use birth control until after we both had our bachelor’s, and then continue putting off babies until he had earned his master’s. I believed in eating healthy and natural foods. He loved mountain dew and junky cereals, yogurt, and juicy burgers. I was against spending too much time online and in front of gaming systems/screens. He was addicted to them. I had an open, honest relationship (for the most part) with my parents. He was still his parents’ “little boy” (they literally called him that) and we would rarely have any alone time because his parents were always in our business. My parents encouraged their children to leave home and pursue college and work. His parents nagged at him to live at home and drive family cars, and always tell them where he was going and who he would be with.

Disclaimer: I know I shouldn’t be ending my sentences with prepositions. But this blog is a place where I’m going to let my feelings, memories, and experiences spill onto the page as they come to my mind. If I stop to edit them perfectly or properly, I will never be brave enough to speak.

My fiance became my husband. To summarize, I was not strong or brave enough to have serious conversations with him. Every time we would begin to touch on a subject where our beliefs differed, he would express his opinion (and his parents’ opinions), and I would be hushed. I let his goals become mine by default. His dreams became mine because I let him squash mine. His ideas became mine because I didn’t know how to continue being my own person, complete with a unique thought process, ideals, and heart. Examples of this will be shared in an upcoming post. I sit here and feel nauseated. It hurts me to talk about my past. But stay with me and know that you’re going to hear some things that are also happening to you in your relationship.

My goal is to help you realize you are being abused. You’ve been under someone’s thumb or shoe long enough to become his victim. I will teach you how to stop being a victim, and how to stop having an abuser. You will need to reach out to others in this journey, however. I am not an expert therapist, or professional life coach. I cannot teach you everything. Some things are going to be just shared, while hopefully a light turns on inside your darkened world. I don’t know who you are, but I love you because you are my sister. You have experienced pain because of the way a man has treated you. And the way you’ve been treated/are being treated is not appropriate. It is NOT acceptable. It is NOT normal. It is NOT okay. It is NOT permissible. It is NOT what a loving God wants for His daughter.

This is the thought that ultimately allowed me to decide to leave my abusive husband in April 2006.

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